52 AGRICULTURE. 



and pease and oats) are much and profitably employed, 

 and with less injury to the soil than either corn or oats 

 alone* 



CHAPTER V. 



OP PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE, AND ITS NECESSARY IN- 

 STRUMENTS. 



WE begin this part of our subject with a few re- 

 marks on the instruments necessary to agriculture, 

 which may be comprised under the well-known 

 names of the plough, the harrow, the roller, the 

 threshing-machine, and the fanning-mill. 



I. Of the Plough. 



' It is among the inscrutable dispensations of Prov- 

 idence, that the arts most useful to man have been 

 of later discovery, of slower growth, and of less 

 marked improvement than those that aimed only 

 at his destruction. At a time when the phalanx 

 and the legion were invented and perfected, and 

 when the instruments they employed were various 

 and powerful, those of agriculture continued to be 

 few, simple, and inefficient. 



Of the Greek plough we know nothing ; and the 

 general disuse of that described by Virgil and Pliny 

 furnishes a degree of evidence that experience has 

 found it incompetent to its objects. With even the 

 boasted lights of modern knowledge, scientific men 



* The good effect of these mixtures was known to the an- 

 cients, from whom the practice has descended to us. What a 

 picture of fertility and abundance have we in the22d chap., 18th 

 book, of Pliny's Natural History : " Sub vite seriturfrumentum, 

 mox legumen, decinde olus, omnia, eodem anno, omniaque ali- 

 ena umbra aluntur." Under the vine is sowed grain, shortly af- 

 terward pulse, then garden vegetables, all in the same year, and 

 sheltered and cherished by each other's shade. 



